The Rise and Fall of the Richest Cattle Kingdom in Dakota: The Marquis de Morès

In 1883, a 24-year-old French nobleman, the Marquis de Morès, stepped off a train in the Dakota Badlands and built a town, a 26-room château, and a slaughterhouse almost overnight. Backed by his father-in-law's New York banking fortune, he planned to take on the powerful Chicago meatpackers by shipping refrigerated beef straight from the range. Instead, his empire collapsed in about three years. He faced a murder charge after a deadly shootout, had a tense standoff with his neighbor Theodore Roosevelt, and lost a fortune often estimated at over a million dollars. And the Badlands weren't even the darkest chapter of his life. This is the story of how a French aristocrat tried to change the American beef business from the middle of nowhere, and what's left of it in Medora, North Dakota today. #NorthDakota #WildWest #History #Ranching #Documentary